The Ultimate Guide to Decluttering Your Email Inbox

Is your email inbox an ever-growing clutter of a mess? Do you feel subtle anxiety every time you open your inbox or receive a new email? Perhaps you get lost in all the chaos, and it is impeding your productivity and responsiveness? Do you feel frustrated because you have to take more than a few steps to prioritize or act on each incoming email?

Not all professionals realize that the digital clutter in an email inbox is just as distracting and detrimental to productivity as a cluttered office or desk. Scientists have found that Email anxiety is a real and debilitating disorder from which many people suffer. Email anxiety is almost always caused by disorganized email inboxes.

By reading this guide, you have taken the first and most crucial step in overcoming this problem. Here are nine critical email clutter tips to help you declutter your email inboxes and become more organized and productive.

1. Move All Disorganized Emails into a Single Folder

Move all the emails in your inbox into a single folder to begin organizing them. If you have hundreds of thousands of emails dating back to the 1990s, do not feel overwhelmed by the task ahead. It is best to start fresh so that all emails you receive during and after decluttering will not interrupt the organization process.

2. Separate Business Emails From Personal

Before you begin decluttering your email inboxes, you should first know the golden rule of email use: never use a single email address for both personal and official correspondence. Suppose you use a single email for everything. In that case, you must first separate them – have one for personal stuff, and another for official correspondences.